Gaming applications, game platforms, and games (generally, “gaming”) include massively multiplayer online games (“MMOG,” “MMO”), massively multiplayer online role playing games (“MMORPG”), console games, desktop or personal computer games, and others. MMOGs, MMOS, and MMORPGs are games that allow numerous players to interact with and within a virtual world. Using the Internet and other types of data networks, users (e.g., persons using computing devices and resources to engage in MMOG, MMO, MMORPG, or other types of games) can also communicate with each other within a game environment. However, conventional techniques for communication within game environments are limited and problematic.
Conventional virtual worlds or game environments and application or communication interfaces (“interfaces”) are limited in both capability and performance. For example, some conventional interface solutions are generally limited to a single server configured to implement a game environment. Conventional solutions using a single server and, in some conventional solutions, a backup server typically restrict the types of processes and functions that are performed by users within a game environment, such as communication. Some conventional solutions use multiple servers. However, each server in a multiple server implementation is typically used to instantiate a specific region of a world or a given set of functions, thus creating a single-server limitation for communication within a multiple server-implemented game environment. Other problems with conventional solutions include limiting player communication to simple in-game message exchanges such as chat or instant messaging, typically using proprietary systems that limit game appeal, user adoption, and commercial potential for revenue generation.
In conventional solutions, a user can communicate with another user playing within the same game environment because user accounts are typically assigned to the same server. However, users are typically unable to communicate with other users located in different regions of a game environment until a user enters the same game environment, which is enabled by the same server. Further, conventional solutions do not allow users to communicate with other users outside of a game environment (i.e., users who are not logged into or interacting within a virtual environment) due to conventional application game architecture, restrictive conventional network topologies for game implementations, inability to process large volumes of real-time or near real-time communication data, lack of interfaces across different applications, platforms, and game environments, and the development and use of proprietary messaging applications, formats, and protocols associated with specific games, game titles, and game platforms.
Other conventional solutions are limited in the ability to convert, interpret or otherwise handle data in alternative data formats or protocols other than those specifically created for the game environment (i.e., native to the game environment or system). For example, a conventional game may have a native messaging system that allows users to “chat” or engage in instant or short messaging between each other. However, conventional native messaging system solutions are unable to integrate or otherwise work with other messaging systems. Conventionally, multi-server game environments do not permit communication entirely between user accounts hosted by different servers, particularly if one shard is used to implement a given region and another shard is used to implement a different region and the users are not interacting within the same region of a game environment.
Thus, what is needed is a solution for game communication without the limitations of conventional techniques.